Great excesses in masturbation seem also to be commoner among women who may be said to be sane than among men.  Thus, Bloch (New Orleans Medical Journal, 1896) records the case of a young married woman of 25, of bad heredity, who had suffered from almost life-long sexual hyperesthesia, and would masturbate fourteen times daily during the menstrual periods.

With regard to excesses in coitus the case may be mentioned of a country girl of 17, living in a rural district in North Carolina where prostitution was unknown, who would cohabit with men almost openly.  On one Sunday she went to a secluded school-house and let three or four men wear themselves out cohabiting with her.  On another occasion, at night, in a field, she allowed anyone who would to perform the sexual act, and 25 men and boys then had intercourse with her.  When seen she was much prostrated and with a tendency to spasm, but quite rational.  Subsequently she married and attacks of this nature became rare.

Mr. Lawson made an “attested statement” of what he had observed among the Marquesan women.  “He mentions one case in which he heard a parcel of boys next morning count over and name 103 men who during the night had intercourse with one woman.” (Medico-Chirurgical Review, 1871, vol. ii, p. 360, apparently quoting Chevers.) This statement seems open to question, but, if reliable, would furnish a case which must be unique.

There is a further important difference, though intimately related to some of the differences already mentioned, between the sexual impulse in women and in men.  In women it is at once larger and more diffused.  As Sinibaldus long ago said, the sexual pleasure of men is intensive, of women extensive.  In men the sexual impulse is, as it were, focused to a single point.  This is necessarily so, for the whole of the essentially necessary part of the male in the process of human procreation is confined to the ejaculation of semen into the vagina.  But in women, mainly owing to the fact that women are the child-bearers, in place of one primary sexual center and one primary erogenous region, there are at least three such sexual centers and erogenous regions:  the clitoris (corresponding to the penis), the vaginal passage up to the womb, and the nipple.  In both sexes there are other secondary and reflex centers, but there is good reason for believing that these are more numerous and more widespread in women than in men.[178] How numerous the secondary sexual centers in women may be is indicated by the case of a woman mentioned by Moraglia, who boasted that she knew fourteen different ways of masturbating herself.

This great diffusion of the sexual impulse and emotions in women is as visible on the psychic as on the physical side.  A woman can find sexual satisfaction in a great number of ways that do not include the sexual act proper, and in a great number of ways that apparently are not physical at all, simply because their physical basis is diffused or is to be found in one of the outlying sexual zones.